Ford - retention of ECEs

So, in ‘22 we saw quite a large increase in the number of newly certified early childhood educators and early childhood educator assistants. It was quite a jump up from the previous year. The government had created a lot of new seats in 2018, 2019 and continue to do so. But we didn’t really see, perhaps because of the pandemic, an increase in the number of people entering the profession. But it does seem that the rates of people entering the profession has gone up quite recently.  

So, it’s a conundrum because we’re trying to work out how that can be squared with what employers have been telling us through these employer surveys that they’re losing staff and they’re losing qualified staff. So, it could well be, we think, but we have to fully put this story together, that the influx of new people from ECE programs is not keeping pace with the rate at which other educators are leaving the sector for other types of work. And that means that it’s kind of like a leaky bucket. There’s new water coming in at the top, but it’s actually flowing out more quickly than it’s coming in. We do want to get to the bottom of that. It may just be a one-year thing to do with the pandemic, but it could also be that there’s a real structural problem with the rate at which people are leaving going up, which is the evidence that we have. And part of that will be retirement for sure. A third of the workforce is over the age of 50. But it could also be because the conditions are proving unattractive and people are finding somewhere else to work.  

So those are definitely the findings that that should give policymakers pause and think about what they are doing to help retain workers as well as recruit, that we’ve done well with recruitment. But what are we going to do to help retain workers?